Covid Posies

Covid Posies

When this lock down began, I became a bit frozen, creatively speaking.  I would walk into my sewing room but then wander out again.  Getting past that hurdle was difficult as I had a hard time focusing but what helped was sorting through my stash and organizing my bits and pieces.

What also helped was hand embroidery.  It seemed to still my anxiety about our global situation, and helped me focus on the tiny task at hand.  All the images of the virus led me to creating red embroidery circular patterns on grey felt circles.  I created 19 unique grey and red embroidered circles.

Of course, then something needed to be done with these creations.  Working towards joy, I decided they could be the centres of fun flowers.  I cut into some of hand dyed fabric to create the petals and then painted/dyed the background.

Since the embroidery was done on felt, when it was appliqued onto the background, the centres bump forward or 'pop up' which is a fun bonus!

I had too many embroidery samples for one project so stay tuned for the next one, on a similar theme.

 

sweet baby quilt

This project began without any particular destination.  I was working with scraps on hand, and tried to experiment with lights and darks, to come up with a pleasing design.

This hung, this way for quite some time.  I thought it o.k. but not great, and couldn't figure out what the problem was.  All the colours worked, sort of, but it just felt like a bit of mess.

Then I heard wonderful news, a baby girl was on her way.  This motivated me to attend to this project in a more directed way.  I decided to 'unpick' or for those of you who are uninitiated to this ancient sewing practice;  this means to pull apart all the seams that you already painstakingly made and begin anew.  I constructed this arrangement which felt much better.  Calmer, and yet still busy.  Bright but not overwhelming...

Of course, not ever able to leave well enough alone I not only decided to create prairie points (triangles all around the edge) but thought it might be a fun challenge to back the prairie points with this white satin I had on hand.  I wanted this quilt to be a tactile delight for the little one ....to be....  

The white satin proved to be a challenge, very hard to sew together all those raw edges, lots of fraying nightmares, and the wide white satin was very difficult to move around the corners.  No quilt police would find the end result acceptable, but I had high hopes that the baby wouldn't mind too much if the corners didn't  lie flat.

Once she was born, I was able to free motion quilt special messages to her in the large negative spaces.  She was born on a Sunday and so in this spot, it is written that 'Sunday's child is full of grace'.

Wherever I could, I free motioned wishes and hopes for her,  here I am wishing her sweet dreams.  The heart is appliqued with a blanket stitch in embroidery floss.

It is backed by a cotton in a rich blue, and the satin looks like a wide ruffle.

and here she is!!!

I am hoping that she will enjoy her fun, busy, less than perfect, labour of love.